Janice Turner interview with Debbie Hayton in the Times

[CaptainWarbeck]

Share token link here: Debbie Hayton: the trans woman taking on the trans activists

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/df87fe47-3dd3-4f35-ac48-81f54aeb418f?shareToken=a53b2f201cdd4c204b9009b204cb1ef3

Janice neatly runs through a history of trans issues with Debbie including a discussion of AGP. An excellent read I thought and will get a wide audience as a Saturday Times Magazine article.

depends on the context

I would have thought the dependency is whether anyone else involved consents (informed consent, mind) or not, if they choose to act upon the urge.

Yes, indeed. That's the context.

I love HJ, but this is the problem with value judgements over who deserves preferred pronouns or not. We all saw the video of HJ criticising the ‘pronoun police’. She tweeted today about a man who threatened her and her objection to him being called ‘she’ - rightly so, women have taken issue. I’ll repeat what I said before, if you use preferred pronouns, that’s on you, but I don’t think you can complain when someone with different value judgements does the same, language is everything and it’s a slippery slope. https://twitter.com/hjoycegender/status/1755862505220419712?s=46&t=g7UjjEa2S2y82o-tbjyL_g

Is the issue simply that the women who use pronouns sometimes are trying to push back from trans extremists, and in doing so are trying to appear 'reasonable'. The only thing they can genuinely compromise on is language.

They can't accept men in women's spaces, or unnecessary medication for children. Their only bargaining tool to avoid seeming 'extreme' is to call some men 'she'.

I love HJ, but this is the problem with value judgements over who deserves preferred pronouns or not. We all saw the video of HJ criticising the ‘pronoun police’.

I may be very wrong. I thought HJ was commenting on the sort of people who continually disrupt a conversation, not with a germane point, but only to police the tone or pronoun use of others.

You could be right, but that interpretation did not occur to me. I thought in that video clip she was demonstrating frustration with those that absolutely insist on sex based pronouns especially as it was at the Genspect conference.

I agree that's how I remember hearing HJ talk about pronouns. That we need to have discussions and it's more useful to allow everyone to speak how they see fit.

I was quite shocked about the fury HJ let out when talking about ‘the [correct sex] pronoun police’. Yes it is annoying when people interrupt and correct someone, spoiling their flow, but does it deserve that kind of fury?

I think if we don’t want to have to use pronouns incorrectly in court or incorrectly in legal situations with spouses and family members etc then we can’t use them privately in everyday life. Sorry but that’s where it ultimately goes if unreasonable expectations are allowed to be met.

There's a longer version of the Helen Joyce clip I think where she explains that she only uses sex based pronouns but doesn't police others because it would make conversations hard. I think it's also the principle of not policing someone's language.
I don't read it as fury, more as expletive laden frustration. Then again telling people to fuck off with their pronouns policing does end up looking a lot like policing itself.

Why? Private is private but public is public, and a matter of record. Private is my business. I can, and should, take account of the public world in my private life, but I'm not going to let it run it. That's totalitarian.

Janice has responded in her column https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ill-use-whatever-pronouns-i-think-courteous-hqhzmwj55

I don't know how many of these meetings or conversations other people have. I have several a week. I've described them elsewhere. I some meetings I can have speakers who say the following when you're doing the round of introductions.

"I'm [X], my pronouns are [several]. I live with ADHD, this may manifest as taking thought breaks. If I delay before responding, please don't speak as it interrupts my thought and may trigger mutism. I have rejection sensitivity dysphoria so consider how you frame responses to me." and it goes on. Usually, a couple of (mental) health conditions and maybe even a physical description: "I have [Y]-length, [colour] hair, with [X]-coloured eyes".

Add in the number of people who tell you about the land on which their institution stands, the displaced people, various historical treaties…it genuinely cuts down on any meeting time if there are several speakers. (I do mean virtual as well as in-person.)

There are people who watch you, particularly when specific members speak in order to "call you out" for signs of not appearing to be adequately engaged and therefore displaying unconscious bias or something worse.

There are people who interrupt every time someone uses a pronoun incorrectly or challenges people who opt for 'they' all the time rather than switch between 'they' and 'she' as given in the tiny name and pronoun chyrons.

But those meetings are so interrupted I can scarcely keep a coherent chain of thought. The productivity is nowhere at times.

Helen Joyce may well have even more of those meetings or conversations that I do. I can understand her position and personal decision.

And I still recognise that selective use of indulgences like friend-based pronouns rather than sex-based has contributed to the mess that we're in with the law and even having discussions.

It's behind a paywall, so I can only see the heading.

Which I completely disagree with.

Women's pronouns aren't a prize, or a medal, for people to hand out to those they like, but withhold from those they don't.

I don't respect you, you're a rapist, so you don't get to have a woman's pronoun. You, on the other hand, are perfectly polite, so you can have one.

This is why people think she doesn't get it.

Maybe she offers a better explanation in the body of the article.

Archive link :)

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2024.02.09-210747/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ill-use-whatever-pronouns-i-think-courteous-hqhzmwj55" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2024.02.09-210747/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ill-use-whatever-pronouns-i-think-courteous-hqhzmwj55

http://bit.ly/3SSpzEN

tjis should work

And yet the abuse Hayton, a physics teacher, received this week was from extremists on the “gender critical” side, who bombarded her head teacher with messages that she is a pervert, a danger to children, and takes her “fetish to work”. (Ironically, Hayton was similarly targeted before, by trans activists trying to get her sacked for holding sex-realist views.)
I wonder what these women would like Hayton to do?…Now it seems that they want to scrap employment protections for those who have undergone “gender reassignment” under the Equality Act too.
…
No more politesse or pretence. Screw pronoun badges. Women seized the right to call a man a man. Now pronouns became a different line in the sand: to call a trans woman “she” was to be a liar, a science-denier, an enemy of women.

The hyperbole waxes strong in this one. I don't consider that to be an accurate version of some nuanced discussions here. I can't speak for ones that are taking place on TwiX.

And Janice Turner, there is a way to find out what MN women might want to do, come talk to us, unless you only engage on TwiX. The difficulty here is that I have no idea which women you're talking about. Who are these "extremists on the "gender critical" side? Was that part of their sig file to the head teacher? Is there a way to validate their standing? Or is this an identity assigned to people with whom JT disagrees?

As for the last para I quoted, that message hasn't got through to anyone in any of the meetings I described above. I can tell you that a disciplinary would be incoming during a meeting if JT's version of the current reality were to happen.

Maybe she offers a better explanation in the body of the article.

She doesn't and she comes off livid that people haven't been falling all over themselves to thank her for her brave, stunning and duly courteous foray into the world of AGPs. The Times readers aren't having it.

I'd be interested to know when and where this happened:

"You can hold concerns about youth transition without screaming at a bereaved mother that her child was a boy."

Truth is, she published a puff piece and glossed over DH's role in the schools guidance. Arguably a key factor in the destruction of safeguarding, arguably helped accelerate the pipeline into GIDS. Which - unless I'm much mistaken - she used to care about?

She called this wrong and she can't seem to think about why people are rightly cross about it. Now she's adding insult to injury.

Probably all the while, those who get their sexual thrills from breaking boundaries and public displays of more and more of their fetish, are fucking delighted. It's all their Christmases come at once.

Janice needs to catch herself on.

Can I just check - the refusal to use female pronouns for a.man is 'extreme'? Is that it?

For a man who, apparent, doesnt mind being called 'him'.

Maybe that's the new sig file on emails or letters from extremists.

Re: pronouns, I use sex-based ones to address or refer to other people.

Certainly doesn't take much does it. Remember the days when Sue Pascoe was referring MN to Prevent? Fast forward, and now these are sufficient grounds for JT that make you an extremist. Whenever I read a history book and wondered how people didn't notice bad things unfolding round them, I know it happened. Arendt wasn't writing playbooks yet here we are, seeing those principles implemented.

Both those links take me to a 404 error?

Share token

I’ll use whatever pronouns I think courteous

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/62cd1602-338e-4206-b609-e6e56a0a91ba?shareToken=38108603728dfa974f51eb5210bd5e6c

The Times readers aren't having it.

The comments disagree with her? Are they setting out the reasons why?

Honestly, doesn't she think for one second that women might be a little unhappy that she is not just awarding men women's pronouns on the basis of whether she likes them or not, but specifically to a man who has told her it's arousing to him!